


The Ascent

by Annakovsky



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/pseuds/Annakovsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd like to commission a sculpture," Mr. Mitothin says, standing in Barney's studio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ascent

**Author's Note:**

> Written for MsSolo

 

 

_the womb of every holt_

"I'd like to commission a sculpture," Mr. Mitothin says, standing in Barney's studio. He reaches out a long finger to touch a half-finished kinetic piece Barney's working on in welded aluminum. It begins to turn slowly. It's called _Daedalus Ascending_. "On a theme," Mitothin says.

"All right," Barney says. "Excellent." He could use the money. He's only been out of art school six months, and the studio space he's renting is getting expensive. He leans back against his work table, hands pressed against its edge.

"For the New Year," Mitothin says. His red-brown hair shags over the collar of his well-tailored suit, and his blue eyes seem bright. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

"Oh," Barney says. That's not what he was expecting, though it does seem to suit Mitothin in a strange way. He's a disquieting man, a little, though Barney doesn't know quite why he thinks that. "Popular theme," he says instead, thinking of Albrecht Durer.

"Yes," Mitothin says. "In particular, perhaps while working on the sculpture, you could think about the question: 'Why would God send these horsemen out?' I think it could be inspirational."

"All right," Barney says. "Sounds interesting."

"I hope so," Mitothin says. He touches _Daedalus Ascending_ again, the elongated, stylized features of Daedalus, his angular wings, his beaky nose. Barney's always pictured Daedalus as looking something like his Great-Uncle Merry, for some reason, and the figure resembles him a little. If Gumerry had ever flown with an Icarus beside him. Next to Mitothin's hand, the metal looks bright.

Simon arrives for lunch just before Mitothin leaves, bounding up the stairs. "Oh," Barney says. "Mr. Mitothin, my brother Simon. Simon, Mr. Mitothin."

"Nice to meet you," Simon says absently, not paying much attention. He's a doctor, like their father, and sometimes it takes him a little, once he's left the hospital, to wrench his thoughts away from his cases.

"A pleasure," Mitothin says, a bit old-fashioned. He reaches out a hand to Simon's ragged old navy jumper. "A hair," he says politely, picking off a long brown one.

"Oh, thanks," Simon says. "My wife's always shedding." Simon's wife is pregnant. It still seems too grown up of him.

Mitothin smiles. When the door closes behind him, the Daedalus sculpture is still turning lazily, light reflecting from its angles.

**

_the queen of every hive_

Barney usually starts his sculptures with an idea, so Mitothin's commission is a good one for his process. He starts playing with media, with form. He makes elongated horses out of clay, abstracting the figures until they're almost unrecognizable. He thinks about how to represent death and famine and plague, about bronze versus ceramic. He digs up an old pocket-sized New Testament someone once gave him on the street and reads the passage about the horsemen over and over again. He hadn't realized before that God was the one who sent them out to kill a quarter of the world. Or, "the Lamb," anyway, who he's pretty certain is Jesus. It's starting to bother him a little, that bit. Or a lot.

Jane took her degree in religious studies, so he brings it up one Sunday afternoon, lying on the sofa in her flat staring out at the grey sky. "You know the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" he asks.

"In the Bible?" Jane says, looking up. She's sitting in an armchair with her legs over one of the arms, reading a book on the goddess Hera. "Yes, Barnabas, I've heard rumors."

"Yeah," Barney says. "I'm sculpting them. Did you know God's the one who sends them out?"

Jane looks thoughtful for a second. "Yeah," she says slowly. "With the seals? I hadn't thought about it like that, but I suppose you're right." She rests her book against her temple, thinking.

"Yeah," Barney says. "I never thought about it either. It's weird, right?"

"Well," Jane says, and shrugs. "There are a lot of weird things in the Bible."

"Yeah, but I mean," Barney says. "It seems like God should be the one stopping people from getting killed, not causing it."

Jane's foot is swinging back and forth, back and forth. "Yeah," she says. "I guess it's supposed to be for the greater good."

"That's stupid," Barney says.

Jane makes a _well, yeah, but what can you do_ face and opens her book again, running her finger down the page to find her place.

"There's just," Barney says. "An awful lot of suffering God isn't stopping, if you ask me. Darfur, and all that. The Holocaust."

"Yeah," says Jane, finding her place and starting to read.

"And I'd like to know why," Barney says. "Why he doesn't stop it. And why God keeps doing things to people they don't want done."

Jane's still reading. "If you're trying to ask why bad things happen to good people," she says absently. "The answer is, nobody knows."

"I know," Barney says. He leans his head back against the couch. Outside, it looks like it might snow.

Jane turns a page. She's the spiritual one in the family. Every spring she goes by herself to Trewissick, where they spent holidays as children, to see some local ritual that only women can watch. Whenever anyone tries to tease her about it she gets a stubborn serious look on her face and won't talk about it anymore.

"Well," Barney says. "I don't even know if I believe in God, so I guess I shouldn't really mind."

"Mmm," Jane says. Her eyes still on her book, she reaches back to hitch up her ponytail.

"Do you believe in God?" Barney asks. "Jane?"

She looks up again, the resigned patient look on her face she used to get when they were small and he wouldn't stop bothering her. "I don't know about God," she says. She stares into space for a second. "I believe in something, though, I guess. Goodness. Light. Something."

"Something active, though?" Barney asks. Outside it's already starting to get dark. Soon it'll be the shortest day of the year.

Jane sighs. "Yeah," she says. "I guess."

The sky outside should seem large, cosmic, but the clouds are hanging low and Barney feels pressed in, like the world's an old house with a low ceiling. He feels like there's something relevant to the discussion that he's forgetting, something God or the forces of goodness or the light or whatever have done, but he can't remember it for the life of him. Instead, for a second he thinks about Daedalus, flying against that low-hanging sky with his wings made of wax.

**

_the blaze on every hill_

Barney wakes up one morning with the feeling that he should go down to the British Museum, and he's in the habit of following his feelings, if at all possible. They usually lead to something interesting. So he's not very surprised when he physically bumps into Will Stanton in the entryway to an Assyrian gallery, Will standing between two giant, ominous human-headed winged bulls.

"Excuse me," Will says, as they disentangle themselves, and then he does a double take when he sees who it is. "Barnabas Drew," he says, smiling slowly, his round face the same as it's always looked. The only real difference between him as a child and him now is that his face is higher off the ground. Barney hasn't seen him in a few years, not since Jane's graduation from Cambridge, but Will doesn't look particularly surprised at running into him either. Though he doesn't know what kind of enormous bolt from the blue it would take to ruffle Will.

"Hello, Will Stanton," Barney says. "What are you doing here? Archaeologizing it up?"

Will smiles. "Something like that," he says. "I was just down talking to the curator about some finds from the latest dig. And now I'm looking at the lamassu." He gestures to the monstrous statues.

"Creepy," Barney says, with more fervor than he intends. They are, though. They give him a weird feeling.

"They're apotropaic," Will says. At Barney's look, he clarifies, "They guarded against evil spirits. At entryways." Will looks at the lamassu again thoughtfully.

"I didn't know you studied Assyria," Barney says.

"Oh, I don't, really," Will says. "I'm just looking around. My specialty's Roman Britain."

"Oh," Barney says. "King Arthur, right?"

Will's expression goes carefully neutral for a second, and he blinks twice. But then Will says, "Right," and his face relaxes. "I forgot you were a King Arthur buff when we were kids."

"Knights and quests," Barney agrees, as they fall into step together, heading towards the European rooms. "Are you going over to the Roman Britain gallery now? I was going to check in on the grail -" he stops suddenly, surprised, and laughs. "Grail. That's a little melodramatic. I meant chalice."

Will smiles politely.

"Grail," Barney says again, thinking now. He feels vaguely like he's forgotten something, something right on the tip of his tongue. "That's funny. I always call it a chalice, but grail just came out, like it's a normal thing to say. I wonder why."

"We were just talking about King Arthur," Will says. They're just about to turn into the Roman Britain gallery where the chalice is, light catching on the glass of the display cases on either side.

"True," Barney says as they come around the corner. When he sees the chalice, something catches deep in his chest, like always. Like there was a bigger world he used to be a part of, a more exciting world, a more meaningful one, and the chalice was part of that. But he guesses everyone feels like that sometimes, like their life is smaller than they expected it would be. "It did feel a little bit like a quest," Barney says. "When we found it in that cave."

"I imagine," Will says, as they walk up to it. Barney looks into the display case at the engraved scenes on its sides, at the placard that says it was presented by Simon, Jane and Barnabas Drew.

"Not like a Grail quest, though, of course," Barney says. "No Fisher King who needed healing. No waste land."

"No questions that have to be asked," Will agrees.

"Yeah, I always thought that was a strange part of the story," Barney says. "It makes sense on a quest to have to give answers. But why would you have to ask a question to win a quest?"

Will is walking around the display case, looking at the chalice from all angles, and he doesn't answer for a second. "I don't know," he says finally. "Maybe sometimes it's more important to ask the right question than it is to have the right answer."

"Hmm," Barney says.

Will looks up from the chalice. "It's interesting to see this again. I haven't really since we found it in that old gypsy caravan."

Barney smiles. "That was the first time we met you. Does it look different?"

Will looks at the chalice again, the panel with the strange writing. "Smaller," he says ruefully, and gives a quick grin.

"Yeah," Barney says. "I think so too."

**

_the tomb of every hope_

Simon's wife, Tamsin, is only six months pregnant, but she goes into labor anyway and the doctors can't do anything about it. Their son's delivered at 24 weeks, so tiny their wedding rings fit over his upper arm. They name him Thomas, and he only lives three days. Barney didn't even get to hold him.

After the funeral, Barney doesn't feel like going home to his flat mates, so he goes to his studio instead, where he can at least be alone. He'd decided to do his sculpture in bronze on a large scale, almost life-sized even though the figures are not particularly naturalistic, so when he lets himself into the darkened room, it towers over him, glinting in the light from the doorway. He's only finished the fourth horseman, Death, though the other ones are half done, their shapes modeled roughly. Death's horse is made of bones, a skeleton horse, and its rider has his hood pulled up, eyes shadowy underneath. Barney stands looking at it for a long time, thinking about Thomas's tiny coffin, how he'd finished the figure of Death the day Thomas was born. Strange, that.

**

_the shield for every head_

The sculpture is absorbing Barney more than it probably should, occupying most of his thoughts for weeks. He keeps dreaming about the horsemen and waking in the middle of the night with ideas, not able to get back to sleep until he writes them down. After a week or so of this he takes to sleeping in his studio so he can work on it when he wakes up, stumbling out of his sleeping bag and right over to the blowtorch. His Irish setter, Merlin, doesn't much like moving into the studio, but he gets used to it, sleeping in the corner while Barney works. They go home during the day to get fresh clothes.

The black horse, traditionally Famine, is the hardest one for Barney to capture. The face won't seem to come out right - he's trying to give it a subtly hungry, ominous look, but it either comes out too obvious or too invisible. But finally one afternoon it seems to be falling into place, the features coming out more what he had in mind. He's engrossed in working on it, up on the ladder with the blowtorch safety-mask over his face, when Merlin jumps up, barking at the door.

Barney flips up the mask and turns off the blowtorch, climbing down to see who's there. When he opens the door, Will Stanton's behind it, holding a fruitcake wrapped in red cellophane.

"Hi," Barney says, surprised.

"Goodness," Will says, taking in his mask and apron, the blowtorch in his hand. "Have I interrupted?"

"Oh, no," Barney says, waving him in the door. "I was just working on a piece. Nothing important."

Will stops dead in the center of the room, staring at the sculpture there. It's maybe a little more than half done, Death and Pestilence mostly finished, Famine half-finished, and War still to be roughed out, all four shapes looming over Will. From where Will's standing, the Famine figure is staring right at him with fierce empty eyes.

Will has this strange expression, a bit similar to the way Barney felt when he looked at the lamassu in the British Museum. Soul-troubled, a little distressed. It's a strange expression to see on Will's normally placid, ordinary face. Most of the time Barney feels proud if his work evokes some deep reaction from someone, but this is actually a little unsettling.

"What's -" Will's voice comes out gravelly, and he stops and clears his throat. "What's it called?"

"Oh," Barney says. "I'm not sure yet. It's of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's a commission."

"It reminds me of someone," Will says, still staring at it.

"Huh," Barney says. Actually, now that he's looking at it from down off the ladder, the face of Famine that he'd been welding has a vague resemblance to Mr. Mitothin. Strange. He scratches Merlin behind the ears absently.

Will finally tears his eyes away like it's a physical effort. "It's, erm, very effective," he says, and he looks thinner and older than Barney remembers him being at the British Museum just a few weeks before. Will holds the fruitcake out to Barney. "I brought over some cake," Will says. "My mother's started making it every Christmas. And I thought of you."

"Thanks," Barney says, taking it from him, touched. He doesn't much like fruitcake, but he likes Will thinking of him.

"I'm bringing some to Simon and Tamsin later," Will says, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Jane told me about your nephew. I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Barney says. "Thanks." He feels awkward talking about it. Everyone in the family's upset, him included, even though he feels sort of outside it at the same time. He moves to the other side of the worktable to put the fruitcake down so he at least has something to do with his hands.

Will's looking at the sculpture again, his mouth slightly open. "You know," Barney says into the silence. "God was the one who sent out the horsemen. Apparently."

"The riders," Will says, almost under his breath.

"What?" Barney says.

Will shakes his head. "I don't think God really sent out the riders. I mean. The horsemen. He just... allowed them."

"Isn't that the same?" Barney says.

Will looks at him. "No," he says, quietly final, like someone who knows what he's talking about.

Barney sits down on the windowsill, cold radiating through the glass, chilling his arm through his sweater. "Do you even believe in God?" he asks.

"I believe in goodness," Will says. He glances back at the sculpture warily. "Not God exactly, but... well, I believe in the forces of goodness, maybe, you could say." His face is carefully neutral again, regarding Barney calmly.

Merlin bumps his head against Barney's leg, resting his chin on Barney's thigh and looking up with big eyes to be patted. "Yeah, that's what Jane said," Barney says. "But where is goodness? Or light or whatever you want to call it? I mean, when babies die. Is it just, I don't know, letting bad things happen for the greater good?"

Will keeps looking neutral, but there's a sad cast to the neutrality now, a slight downturn at the corners of his mouth. "I don't know, Barney," he says, sounding tired. "Maybe... they can't. Maybe they want to, but they have to think about the greater good first."

Barney frowns. "That's terrible."

Will's fiddling with a lump of clay Barney left out on the table, rolling it out into a long tube, like a child's model of a snake. "Someone once told me," Will says in a low voice. "That at the heart of the light is a cold white flame without mercy or compassion."

Barney suddenly thinks of Great-Uncle Merry, standing at the top of a hill, fierce profile against a windy sky. "It's like that time Great-Uncle Merry...," he starts to say, knowing that this is exactly what he's been trying to talk about all these weeks, something right there in that memory. But then it slips past him, gone in a blink, and he can't remember what he was going to say. It had been important, though.

Will's staring at him. "What?" he says.

Barney's suddenly angry, all out of proportion, frustrated at not being able to remember. Stupidly angry - it's not like it's Will's fault he's having a brain spasm. "I can't remember," he says, sounding more furious than he means to, and Will takes a step back. "Sorry," Barney says. "I just... it was important. Ugh, now it's going to bother me."

"Mmm," Will says. But he's avoiding Barney's eyes, and he looks troubled. He looks back at the horsemen again, then starts walking around the rest of the studio, looking at the other things Barney's working on. Like Mitothin, he stops at _Daedalus Ascending_ , looking at it with an expression Barney can't read. The figure of Daedalus has turned so it's looking right at the figure of Famine, like the two are glaring at each other in some kind of contest.

Will pushes his brown hair out of his eyes, standing there in between the two statues, his shoulders hunched.

**

_Eirias_

Maybe it's unsurprising that on Midwinter's Eve Barney has nightmares about horsemen with Mr. Mitothin's face chasing him, bearing down on him. It's one of those nightmares where you run and run but can't get away, and he wakes up in the studio with his heart pounding.

The bronze horsemen loom over him in his sleeping bag, shadowy in the moonlight. He lies there, hardly daring to move, until he untangles his arm from his sleeping bag to feel Merlin beside him, his furry side moving up and down slowly as he breathes. As he buries his hand in Merlin's fur, the Daedalus statue catches his eye, turning slowly next to the door like some kind of watchman. Barney's reminded suddenly of the apotropaic winged bulls he saw with Will, the ones that went in doorways.

He can't shake the feeling of the horsemen watching him, about to come to life and come after him, can't calm down. It's ridiculous, like he's a child, but he can't stand it, has to leave. At least until the sun rises and things look normal again.

On a whim, he takes the Daedalus statue with him when he leaves the studio, feeling vaguely like a superstitious idiot - terrified of his own work, for God's sake. He shows up at Jane's door at five in the morning, his sleeping bag rolled under one arm and Daedalus hanging from the other, Merlin sleepily leaning against his leg.

There's a long pause between his ringing the bell and Jane coming to the door, her hair going in all directions. She's got a robe pulled on over pajamas, her arms wrapped around herself. "Barney?" she says, sleepily squinting in the hallway's light.

"I had a nightmare," Barney says. He feels like he's about seven years old, and he gives her a look that he hopes reminds her of him at that age. "Can I sleep over here?"

"For heaven's sake," Jane mutters, relaxing when she hears nobody's hurt. "How old are you?" But she swings the door open for Barney to come in. As he walks past her, she stares at Daedalus. "Why on earth did you bring that mobile over here?"

Barney shrugs and hangs it on a hook near the door, where Jane used to have a hanging plant before it died.

Jane looks confused, but waves a hand at the sofa. "Make yourself comfortable, I suppose," she says, starting to head back down the hallway to her bedroom. "And by the way, you're making me breakfast in the morning."

"Thanks, Jane," Barney says, and rolls his sleeping bag out onto the sofa. He feels safer already, the door shut between him and the horses, Jane asleep in the next room, Daedalus turning by the door. He's out like a light for another couple of hours.

For breakfast, he makes bacon and eggs. When Jane comes into the kitchen at eight-thirty, he's got twelve pieces of bacon in the frying pan and Merlin sitting alert at his feet, ears perked up, hoping for scraps.

Jane stands in the doorway and blinks at him. "You feeling particularly hungry?" she asks, looking at all the bacon. "Or is the government quartering troops here again?"

Barney shrugs. "I thought we might need a lot," he says, turning it carefully with tongs.

Jane rubs at her face and sits down at the kitchen table, yawning. Just as Barney's moving the bacon onto a paper towel to drain and starting to crack the eggs, the doorbell rings.

Barney silently gets out another plate as Jane looks at him. It's early for visitors.

Will Stanton's at the door. "Hello, Jane," he says, then notices the Daedalus statue and stares at it.

"Happy birthday, Will," Barney calls from the kitchen.

"Oh," Will says, looking mildly surprised that Barney's there at that hour of the morning. "Barney. Thanks."

Barney starts frying the eggs as Will and Jane both come into the kitchen. "Want some bacon?" he asks.

Will pauses and looks at the giant pile of bacon on the paper towels. "Okay," he says, untangling one piece from the others. "Were you expecting guests?"

Barney shrugs.

Jane sits back down at the kitchen table and looks at them, Barney at the stove, Will leaning against the kitchen counter. "What on earth is going on this morning?" Jane asks.

"It's Midwinter's Day," Will says, like that explains him and Barney both showing up before nine. Outside the window, a few flakes of snow are starting to come down. It's cold out, colder than usual, and so Barney can feel it radiating off Will's clothes. "I wanted to talk to you," Will says in a lower voice, to Jane. Now that Barney's looking at him properly, he seems upset and exhausted. "About what you were saying before."

"About your dark night of the soul," Jane says. She tucks her hair behind her ears.

"It's not really a - well, yes, all right," Will says. "I don't know...."

He's interrupted by the doorbell ringing again. Jane visibly starts. Barney gets a fourth plate down and puts the kettle on.

It's Bran Davies at the door, a knapsack slung over one shoulder, his white hair poking out from under a knit hat, his strange yellow eyes owlish in the dim morning light. He and Jane don't say anything, just look at each other.

"Hi, Bran," Barney calls from the stove. "Bacon and eggs okay for breakfast?"

Bran blinks. "Uh... yes, of course," he says, as Jane lets him in. He stops walking abruptly in the kitchen doorway when he sees Will. "What's going on here?" he says, sounding a little alarmed.

"Honestly," Jane says, behind him. "I have no idea. You've all just turned up."

"I was stopping by on my way to the train," Bran says, mostly to Will. He sounds a little defensive. "I'm going home for Christmas and thought I'd tell Jane goodbye."

"Ah," Will says, his face back to neutral, inscrutable. He looks at Bran, then at Barney, then at Jane, and sighs.

Barney puts two fried eggs on one plate, two on another, and starts cracking more into the frying pan. "I have the strange feeling," he says, handing a plate to Will. "That we're just waiting on Simon."

There's a pause, then they all turn to look at the door, just a second before the doorbell rings.

"And then there were five," Will says under his breath, putting the plate down on the table. Merlin barks.

When Jane opens the door, Simon looks extremely surprised at the crowd standing there looking at him. "Oh," he says. Daedalus is turning slowly next to the door, the diffuse light from the window glinting off its angles. Simon looks from one to the other of them. "Am I late?" he says finally. No one laughs.

"Come have breakfast," Barney says, as the kettle starts to shriek.

They all turn to look at him. "What?" he says. "I'm hungry."

"This is a very strange coincidence," Bran says, as Barney leads the way to the kitchen. "All of us turning up here."

"Do you believe in coincidences?" Barney asks. He starts making more toast.

"Yes," Simon says.

"No," Bran says.

"No," Jane says.

Will doesn't say anything. When Barney glances over, Will's standing in the kitchen doorway patting Merlin. "Good dog," Will says absently.

"Will?" Jane asks.

Will looks up at her slowly, like he's tearing himself away from some internal conversation the rest of them can't hear. He stops patting Merlin, who noses his hand in protest. "No," Will says finally. "I don't believe in coincidences."

Barney starts dishing up more eggs as Bran and Simon talk about the train schedules and their Christmas plans. When Barney turns back around, Will's got his arm stretched out towards them, five fingers spread wide. There's a sound like bells, somewhere in the distance.

Then Bran's saying, his Welsh accent thick, "I wish we had a quest to go on again. It's so dull without them."

"Bet you wish you'd kept the sword," Simon says, his mouth full of toast.

Bran smiles and sits down at the table with a plate of food. "Or the harp," he says.

Barney feels a little dizzy, though he's not sure why. They're just talking about the Light, from when they were children, fighting off the Dark. And why wouldn't they?

"Barney had a quest, lately," Will says.

Barney looks at him, surprised. "No, I didn't," he says.

"You asked the right questions," Will says, patting Merlin one last time and then going to wash his hands. "To recover what was lost."

Jane pours herself some tea. "What was it you wanted to talk about, Will?" she asks, sitting down next to Bran.

"Nothing," Will says. "I figured it out."

The snow's settling on the trees outside, coming down harder and harder as they all sit around the table with their breakfast. Bran takes off his hat and runs his hands through his white hair. Barney sits down on the windowsill, sipping his tea. In the other room, Daedalus is turning.

 


End file.
